Thursday, 12 September 2013

My buffy-slaying days.

I once
read about the bragging rights of a Catholic priest by the name of Gabriele
Amorth who claimed that "he's done
more than 160, 000 exorcism!" He is 88 years old and he said that at
his peak, he had performed 20 exorcism a day. Wow, that's a lot of disembodied spirits made homeless by one man.

Mmm....this
kind of reminds me of our local jolly hangman, Darshan Singh, who
commented that he had once hung 18 men in a day. The 75 years old robust
Indian even boasted that he had executed close to 1000 convicts during his
long career. I guess the main difference between the hangman and the priest is
that one ends a life and the other returns it back.

But
still, I wonder in the case of exorcism, is the expert priest able to
differentiate between a possessed subject and one beset by
psychological/psychiatric illnesses? Should the Van-Helsing-like priest be well
versed in the thousands of mental illnesses classified in the DSM V so
that he could distinguish the truly possessed from the mentally ill?
Because god forbid that the demon
slayer should perform exorcism rites on someone who can clinically be
diagnosed as suffering from severe autism, multiple personality disorder,
alcoholic hallucinosis or even acute stress disorder instead of an
unsolicited visitation of disembodied spirits.

Or,
can some adolescent rebellions or teens who are BPC (Beyond
Parental Control) be deemed as at least mildly possessed or even possessed
by lesser known demons? Or, can the DSM labels that the psychiatrists
give to mentally unsound patients be merely secular euphemisms disguising
its true origin, that is, demon possession? I know these are tough questions
that are long on ignorance and short on enlightenment.

In
1850, a New Orleans physician named Samuel Cartwright discovered a new disease
and called it drapetomania. Don’t let the name frazzle you. It is simply a disease
causing Negroes to run away for their masters. Having studied ancient Greek, Dr
Cartwright took two words “drapetes” meaning “runaway slave” and the familiar “mania”
and clumsily joined them together. No
joke. Dr Cartwright considered such behavior as most bizzare and classified
it as a mental illness. Of course, we know better now – much better. But at that time, it was a disease that was literally
treated by “whipping the devil out of
them.” Somehow, such treatment is reminiscent of demonic activities. Here’s
an etiology of the disease that might interest you, as found in the Buffalo
Medical Journal, “drapetomania occurs
when the nervous erythism of the human body is thrown into relations with the
magnetic pole…this directing the slave’s footsteps northward.” How incredulously strange?

Then,
in the mid-sixties Singapore, there was an outbreak of koro. Again, the name is a red herring. It is merely a medical case
of shrinking manhood or genital retraction. Western psychiatrists at that time
applied a Freudian term and called it “castration
anxiety”. Many red-blooded Singaporean men inflicted by koro panicked and rushed to the
emergency rooms for immediate medical attention. At that time, rumors swirled
that koro had many causes like eating
contaminated pork, poisoned Thai food and tainted cigarettes - even demonic
possession was not spared as a possible cause. Some of the traditional remedies
recommended were drinking young boy’s urine, consuming human placenta, regular relaxation
and prolonged bed rest. The really desperate even underwent certain mediumistic
cleansing much like the exorcism rituals that we are familiar with here. I guess when all else fails, one can always
find a demonic attribution to a mental affliction.

As
an aside, I had my fair share of buffy-slaying days during my untutored
youth. And the one that stuck out like a sore thumb for me was when a close
friend of mine, a Christian leader mind you, was allegedly demon
possessed. Here’s the story stripped bare.

It
was about 23 years ago and he called me one eerie night to tell me that he
was demonized. To prove it, he told me the color of my undergarment with
uncanny precision. No joke. (Alas, upon reflection years later, I
could have been more discerning since we shopped regularly and he knew I
had always bought the same color).

I
freaked out that night and the next day, I gathered a cohort of
cross-bearing, tongues-muttering pubescent youth at botanical gardens to
perform our first public exorcism. We encircled the subject and prayed
with apocalyptic fervor. My possessed friend manifested, growled and hissed at
us before breaking the holy encirclement and ran off - howling like a monkey
with ebola.

We
then gave chase, cussing and swearing, and ran around the gardens like a
couple would normally do in a typical Indian movie minus the corny
romance around coconut trees and the hypnotic bangra music. After what
seemed like eternity, we managed to subdue the beast and our friend
fitfully returned, triumphant. That day, we all went back home completely
sobered and serious with our faith.

About
ten years later, my friend, the one who had claimed to be possessed, confessed
to me that it was all a spiritual ruse to get us to be serious with God. Imagine the shock! Muttering to myself,
this time without the tongues, I wished I was then armed with a baseball bat at
botanical gardens as a practical supplement to the traditional laying of
hands. At least, if I don't get the demons scampering with the usual
pentecostal massage, I could beat some honesty out of him! Alas, the folly
of youth, and the gullibility of religious extremism.

So,
therein lies my personal experience with demon possessions. I hope my tale
has been instructive (if not amusing) and the questions I have posed above would
provoke some discussion on this foggy area of faith where even angels fear
to go at it alone. Cheerz.